Predators & Pornography. A disturbing link.

NRO ^ | May 19, 2005, 8:15 a.m. | By Penny Nance

[Aquinasfan]

Bad behavior sometimes leading to worse behavior does not take a huge amount of common sense to understand.

It does when you're trying to rationalize your own vices.

[MarkL]

Fact: The vast majority of people who see a Geico commercial do not buy Geico. So why does Geico advertise?

In order to get people who currently have insurance with other carriers to drop it in favor of Geico.

So, what does advertising have to do with porn? Are you saying that there are advertisements for porn out in the open?

You're just not making any sense. You're trying to prove a causal relationship between porn and sexual predators by using advertising?

Mark

[frogjerk]

Did I miss any other sophistries?

How about, "I use porn and I'm normal--I swear!"

He He.

I should not laugh because we are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God.

[XR7]

So if life imitates art, and a piece of suppossed art models a destructive form of behavior that we would never want to see indulged, should that piece of art be banned?

Are you saying that pornography is art?

[Dead Corpse]

Yeah. I know. I was bored.

Oddly, I was just going to go and get some more work done.

Good luck...

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Fact: The vast majority of people who see a Geico commercial do not buy Geico. So why does Geico advertise?

Porn advertises the sale of porn. You can't get the actual women in the magazine.

You are making the identical argument that Muslims use for covering women in burkahs and confining them to the home. After all, the sight of any flesh is like a storefront manequin that intices men to buy or steal. And the actual merchandise is right there.

[Tribune7]

bump for later

[Kenton]

Pornography is socially unacceptable. (I know you will be arguing MTV and the like...)

If watching or displaying pornography is socially acceptable behavior, walk down the street browsing a copy of some pornographic magazine and check out the reactions you will get. Try and give it to a child with their parent present and see what type of reaction you will get. Watch porn in broad daylight in your front yard.

Sex with my wife is legal too. It's also socially acceptable.

Doing it on the street rather than in the privacy of my own home is different. Doing it in broad daylight in my front yard would get me arrested, for sure. Doing it in front of your kid with both of you watching would probably make you both barf, since my wife and I are 59.

Your example doesn't hold water.

There are certain things that are acceptable behavior in the privacy of ones' own home, which taken to illogical extremes, cease to be acceptable. Looking at "dirty pictures" is one of them. IMHO. Sexual predation, on the other hand, is not acceptable. Period.

[King Prout]

banned, as in: made illegal by government?
no.

shunned, as in avoided and castigated by a decorous society?
sure.

[bird4four4]

Please cite me a case where an automobile as been used in a crime and the car dealer was held accountable.

[GOPJ]

Post hoc ergo propter hoc violation. Every single one of those predators also drank water and ate bread at some point in their lives. This does not mean that bread and water drove them to predation.

Gimme a break. Do you really believe a person who owns kiddie porn and a random person who drinks water have an equal chances of committing the rape of a 5 year old? You're an idiot, a sickie, or someone oblivious to the concept of statistical probabilities.

[isom35]

wouldn't hugh hefner and larry flynt be multiple offense predators by now?

[MarkL]

A gun is not immoral in itself, neither is a car, but, porn is by its very nature immoral.

I'm curious to know just how an inanimate object is immoral... But I've got to tell you that there are lots of liberals, some of my own family members included, who will insist that guns ARE immoral and evil in nature, and that anyone who owns or uses a gun (with the exception of police and military, who are forced to use them), is immoral, if not evil.

Mark

[AppyPappy]

In order to get people who currently have insurance with other carriers to drop it in favor of Geico.

I guess you are admitting that media can influence people's behaviors.

[frogjerk]

wouldn't hugh hefner and larry flynt be multiple offense predators by now?

Nah, they have never even exploited one person... **rolling eyes**

[AppyPappy]

You are making the identical argument that Muslims use for covering women in burkahs and confining them to the home.

Nice strawman. Where did you get it?

[ElkGroveDan]

So if life imitates art, and a piece of suppossed art models a destructive form of behavior that we would never want to see indulged, should that piece of art be banned?

Funny you should ask. I know Danielle's mother and the parents of other kids who have been raped and murdered. If those who advocate "protection" of this kind of pornography ever looked one of these parents in the eye and seen the awful, tortured pain that never goes away, the issue would be settled.

Unfortunately they never do look them in the eye when the parents come to testify in legisaltive committees. The liberals slink away and hide and then cast their pro-porn, pro-predator votes at the end of the day when committee business is being wrapped up.

It can't continue this way. There is going to be an uprising by parents and all sane people some day soon. Politically it won't be pretty. The time is coming.

[Protagoras]

Assuming life imitates art to a certain extent, here's the FR philosophical question o' the day...

Bad assumption, bad conclusion.

So if life imitates art, and a piece of suppossed art models a destructive form of behavior that we would never want to see indulged, should that piece of art be banned?

Child porn is not art, it is a crime. The rest is moot because of that.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Are you saying that pornography is art?

I would say that every creation, however crude, is art and that there is no such thing as "pornography" except according to a standard that is different in the mind of every viewer, like "good" art and "bad" art. Pornography and bad art are a matter of taste. What do you think of that?

[QuiMundus]

Anything addictive in nature usually follows a pattern of increased supply of the source of the addiction - which could lead to predatory behavior in some cases. I am not sure that porn in of itself causes predatory behavior, but I do think those with predatory tendencies feed off of the kind of desensitized fantasy that porn provides. Personally, I would be for increasing restrictions on it. I fail to see how anyone's free speech impinged in this way would do any real harm to anyone.